LinkedIn has unveiled Showcase Pages, a complement to its now well-known Company Pages, with the important difference that now followers of the brand can interact directly with the specific branch, unit or business they are interested in.
In what appears to be an effort to consolidate brand presence, LinkedIn has launched Showcase Pages, a complement to its now well-known Company Pages, with the important difference that now followers of the brand can interact directly with the specific branch, unit or business they are interested in.
In a blog post today, LinkedIn highlighted the fact that followers had nowhere to show companies what they are actually most in to, among the various corporate activities.
This move is a smart way for LinkedIn in many ways.
1. It keeps users captive for longer by enticing them to explore one click deeper into a company’s content and through various verticals within the end page.
2. It gives LinkedIn the opportunity to further develop its already expanded brand relationships by providing companies with the one tool they so far lacked to better understand their follower demographics by specific interest within their organization. Of course, Showcase Pages come with LinkedIn analytics tools for tracking visitor footprints.
3. It opens the door to better ad targeting for LinkedIn: now that they know exactly what you’re after at the company, they will be able to serve ads that cater to your specific interest, linked to the brand… or not. We’ll leave that to their teams to decide whether there will be exclusive deals.
4. Last but not least, it offers brands a new avenue to interact with followers, potential business partners, prospects and future hires. So far, interaction on the platform was only possible by way of likes and comments on specific posts, each scattered in time and across the companies’ different pages. With Showcase Pages, LinkedIn has created the one-stop, go-to destination for brands and followers alike.
The examples provided by LinkedIn were three major enterprise ones, illustrating the need to be able to pinpoint interest by activity while providing all news across the companies in one single page: HP Converged Infrastructure, Microsoft Office and Adobe Marketing Cloud
Responding to an earlier comment that it was not clear whether, or rather, how much brands will have to pay to get a Showcase Page going, LinkedIn confirmed with ClickZ that there is no fee associated with a Showcase Page and that “nothing of the sort has been discussed yet.”
What is clear though, is that, much like what RebelMouse did for social networks, LinkedIn is quietly building a repository of content for brands. In one single place.
What are your thoughts?
